1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an image forming apparatus, such as a copier, that reads the image on a document, for example, and forms an image according to the read signal on a sheet of paper.
2. Description of the Related Art
With copiers, an automatic document feeder that feeds documents automatically to a document table for copying is generally used for reproduction of a desired number of copies of a desired size, because it is hard work just to put documents one after another on the document table when a lot of documents have to be copied.
When documents or material of two or more sizes are copied through the automatic document feeder, if documents of large sizes could be copied on a one-document one-output sheet basis and only documents of small sizes copied on a single output sheet, the number of copying sheets used would be decreased.
Once driven with the operation data set, however, conventional automatic document feeders continue a series of processes regardless of document size, so that such a process of scaling down two or more documents only in the case that they are of small sizes so as to pack them into a single copying sheet is not be carried out automatically. Therefore, the operator stops the automatic mechanism, lays out as many sheets of material on the document table as he wants to copy on a single copying sheet, reduces the scale, and finally copies them. As a result, copying documents of two or more sizes so as not to waste output sheets involves troublesome manual operations and longer working hours.